By the time you’ve finished reading this post, YouTube viewers around the world will have watched just about 2.5 years worth of animal-related videos. From corgi stampedes, to otters holding hands, to tiny hamsters going on dates, screaming goats, lions, crocodiles, even buffalo battling it out in the wild—still one of YouTube’s earliest and most memorable hits - pet and animal videos stand out as a classic YouTube genre loved by viewers everywhere.

And then there are the cat videos. Everybody’s heard the joke that YouTube’s success is owed to our feline friends. And while this isn’t quite true (little known fact: dog video searches began surpassing cat searches back in 2010), we proudly dedicate this first birthday post, in part, to those tabbies that continually warm our hearts and touch our funny bone.

Indeed: there are approximately 10 million cat videos on YouTube right now, meaning the world has uploaded an average of one to two cat videos per minute over the last 10 years.

For some, one upload leads to global stardom. Grumpy Cat, for instance, was featured in two New York Times best selling books and a Lifetime movie starring Aubrey Plaza. The Keyboard Cat meme, a 2007 video showing a cat playing the piano, has become so popular it made appearances at the MTV Music Awards and The Colbert Report. Nothing less than trailblazers, these kitties paved the way for cats such as Maru, Lil Bub, Colonel Meow, and Simon’s Cat to become some of today’s biggest stars on YouTube.